John Carpay: Bad laws are the result of bad politics. Bad politics result from a rotten culture. A rotten culture emerges when too many people embrace bad ideas. A complete description of all the bad ideas that are now wrecking Canada’s culture, society, and economy would fill many volumes. But here follows a partial list. “Most parents are dangerous and abusive.” This [...]
John Carpay: Bill C-63 (Online Harms Act) is the most serious threat to free speech in Canada in generations. If passed into law by Parliament, Bill C-63 would give the Canadian Human Rights Commission new powers to prosecute and punish non-criminal speech if deemed to be “hateful” in the subjective opinion of federal bureaucrats. Canadians found guilty would be required to pay [...]
John Carpay: In his masterful work The Anatomy of Fascism, Robert Paxton surveys fascist movements and parties in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s, looking at their differences and similarities and then arriving at a workable definition. Fascist movements were hostile to democracy and to individual rights and freedoms. Despising the idea of individual citizens, each choosing their own individual priorities, fascists [...]
John Carpay: Jasmin Grandel and Darrell Mills have asked the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal to rule against the Saskatchewan government’s ban on outdoor gatherings of more than 10 people. Grandel and Mills attended various peaceful outdoor protests in 2020 and 2021, resulting in hefty fines for violating Public Health Orders. In 2020 and 2021, Saskatchewan enforced its restrictions on outdoor gatherings against [...]
John Carpay: The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms requires governments to justify any law that violates one or more of our Charter freedoms of conscience, religions, expressional, association, mobility, and peaceful assembly. Unless the government can provide persuasive evidence in court to show that its law or policy is doing more good than harm, Canadian judges are morally and legally obligated [...]
John Carpay Interim writer, John Carpay, Law Matters Rape victims in Ontario grieve not only the evil that was inflicted on them, but also the failure of the Crown to ensure that serious offences are tried promptly. In 2016, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in R. v. Jordan that serious crimes must be tried within 30 months, based on [...]
In August of 2023 at the University of Regina, UR Pride Centre for Sexuality and Gender Diversity filed a court application seeking to strike down Saskatchewan’s “Use of Preferred First Name and Pronouns by Students” policy. This policy protects children from being pressured or manipulated (absent parental knowledge and consent) into embarking on a dangerous and futile quest to become the opposite [...]
John Carpay: Judging by Canadians’ overwhelming compliance with lockdowns, vaccine passports, and travel restrictions since March of 2020, it unfortunately seems that most Canadians meet authoritarianism with unquestioning obedience. University of Manitoba psychology professor Robert Altemeyer argues that those with an authoritarian personality are submissive even to authority figures who are dishonest, corrupt, and inept. They persist in their belief that their [...]
John Carpay: When statisticians speak of “excess” deaths, they speak of a higher-than-expected death rate. The number of “expected” deaths (for a country or province, for one year or some other time period) is based on the population’s age, race, employment, education, income, marriage rates, birth rates, and mortality statistics for previous periods. For example, statisticians might expect 300,000 people to die in [...]
John Carpay: I recently had the privilege of meeting Holocaust survivor and human rights advocate Vera Sharav and listening to her speak at an event in Hamilton, Ont. in June. Vera Sharav has been a thorn in the side of big pharma since her son died suddenly and unexpectedly from side effects caused by an antidepressant medication that he was taking in [...]
John Carpay: I recently had the privilege of meeting Holocaust survivor and human rights advocate Vera Sharav and listening to her speak at an event in Hamilton, Ont. in June. Vera Sharav has been a thorn in the side of big pharma since her son died suddenly and unexpectedly from side effects caused by an antidepressant medication that he was taking in [...]
John Carpay: In Canada in 2023, it takes remarkable courage to state the obvious. At a public meeting of the Waterloo Region District School Board in January of 2022, a teacher raised concerns about school library books promoting transgender ideology to children. In a shocking display of blatant censorship, Waterloo school board chair Scott Piatkowski expelled Carolyn Burjoski from this public meeting, after [...]
John Carpay: The more that people possess virtues like humility, wisdom, courage, and self-control, the less that people need regulations and laws to govern their conduct. In a society where most citizens possess a high degree of virtue, people have the capacity to cooperate with each other to achieve social, economic, financial, and community goals. Virtuous people don’t need thousands of laws [...]
John Carpay: Censorship spreads like a cancer, starting small but then expanding everywhere. Once upon a time, only 15 years ago, pro-life student clubs were the only groups facing censorship on campus. Pro-life students were barred from renting rooms or other spaces on campus that were freely available to everyone else. Pro-life students were expressly prohibited from setting up recruitment tables at [...]
John Carpay: Since early 2020, the majority of religious leaders around the world have supported lockdowns, mask mandates, vaccination passports, and other coercive measures that violated the freedom, prosperity, and well-being of millions of citizens. As just one prominent example, in August of 2021 Pope Francis and other bishops praised the new Covid vaccine as “safe and effective.” Vatican City pressured all [...]